


a strange flight i'm taking

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cover stories, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Phil Coulson Is a Good Bro, Sleepy Cuddles, Trust Issues, Worry, dating a spy is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22652974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: These last few times he’d tried to go back to playing along with it all, acting like he still halfway believed any of what she was saying about the latest job. But they both knew better.
Relationships: Andrew Garner/Melinda May, Phil Coulson & Andrew Garner, Phil Coulson & Andrew Garner & Melinda May, Phil Coulson & Melinda May
Comments: 15
Kudos: 36





	a strange flight i'm taking

_1998_

Andrew was locking up files after work when his desk phone rang.

The clinic was closed for the day. The phone out front hadn’t rung first, so this phone really shouldn’t be ringing at all. But what if it was…

“Hello?”

“I want you to understand she’s going to be all right.”

It took him a moment to place the voice. “Phillip?”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean she’s…” he said with a horrible sinking in his chest, because _she_ had to mean Melinda and she’d been ‘at work’ without calling for about 9 days.

“If you’re going to ask questions or cause a scene, I can’t make them let you in. Write this address down.”

He copied it down in a haze, barely registered the numbers and didn’t recognize the street. Phillip only said it once.

“Please do not lose the paper on your way here. There’s a grey door marked as an emergency exit. Come in that one. Try and get here in an hour. You can stay until 11 PM. Go ahead and tell them you’re there to see Melinda May at the desk.”

He’d hung up before Andrew could make another sound. 

The dial tone made him jump when it kicked in and Andrew got up to start digging for the maps they had in the lobby.

Melinda usually called him once on the longer “trips”, asked to hear about his day, or she told him first that she wouldn’t be able to call. She’d tell him something about paranoid clients or weird boxes or remote locations. Before, he’d heard about places she’d seen and stories about some of her scars.

But they’d been living together a few months now.

They’d both wanted that. It was more time together when she was in the city and it saved money being wasted on empty rooms. It wasn’t the nicest place, but it was the right location for both of them to get to work. It was more nights and mornings and meals together and it had been so worth the risk of asking when they’d been taking things pretty slow.

But the stories that had held up most of those months they were dating were wearing very thin. He’d almost bought the whole story when she broke her arm last year, could almost ignore that she never packed anything for the layovers on her trips, the pager that wasn’t available anywhere he’d ever seen, the bullet wound on her thigh that she’d said was an old burn.

The hours didn’t bother him. If she’d really done what she said, private security for the kind of people who chartered planes for secretive trips or to move documents or witnesses from city to city, that would have always been fine. That she also did some flying was more than fine. Andrew would have continued wondering how he got so damn lucky that someone who studied martial arts abroad and then poured their wanderlust into a crazy job like _that_ liked to come home and fall asleep on his lap, was genuinely happy every time he cooked for her, had at least two handheld Tetris games hidden in their apartment and smiled up into their kisses.

He’d just already known it wasn’t true before he’d ever brought up the lease. Every bit of paper she had for her job stayed in a locked safe. He didn’t know the locations she went to for work. The phone number she’d given him if he ever had to contact her wasn’t listed. If Phillip really worked on _scheduling logistics_ Andrew was going to eat the stupid futon they’d bought. He’d _known_.

Andrew had thought he could handle it.

But now he’d seen her come home with stitches on every limb, with a sprained knee and a cheekbone bruised red and bloody knuckles. Melinda came home with chemical burns. She came home with bruises bigger than his hands. Living together didn’t give her the space to reschedule dates to hide injuries. It made him notice all the times she’d kept her shirt on or turned the lights off when they were in bed.

It was harder to deal with then he’d thought. But the worst part was the endless supply of answers and petty complaints and details and smooth changes of subject whenever he asked. It didn’t make Melinda nervous to lie. The only tell was the amount of words.

But he’d asked too many questions after the burns and it had gotten, “I thought you promised us moving in together wasn’t going to make you turn _clingy_ ,” flung back in his face. Eight stitches down her arm three weeks later and she’d finally threatened to go sleep in the tub just to get some quiet.

He’d still known he shouldn’t have just said it, that getting it out in the open between them was in this case a bad idea, but he hadn’t even been asking her to _tell_ him anything.

“You don’t have to tell me. I won’t even ask. Just _please_ don’t make something up today.”

That had gotten a shocked stare that could have been planned, but he had a bad feeling was completely genuine, and all she’d said was, “Why would you say that to me?” before she walked out.

Melinda hadn’t said anything about it when she got back right on time and uninjured, didn’t point out he was holding her like he thought he’d never see her again. She held him just as tight.

These last few times he’d tried to go back to playing along with it all, acting like he still halfway believed any of what she was saying about the latest job. But they both knew better.

He kept wanting to think maybe they’d rushed into this, that all the months they’d already dated just didn’t add up the same with him finishing his dissertation and her out of the city half the time, but _they_ weren’t the problem here. He’d known she was it for him that first month.

They still had a problem. Andrew had caught her staring at him twice now, this horrible sad look on her face.

The address took him to a building that looked like it was medical offices, brick and half empty, faded _space for lease_ sign out front. There was an average looking hospital building across the street. A generic glass office looming nearby. Some ageing rowhouses and a construction site. Everything was almost _too_ average around this block and somehow it still took Andrew about 10 minutes to spot the door, trying very, very hard not to look suspicious.

This was not an office.

The two people at the desk were not surprised to see him. Andrew had a feeling if they had been, he would not have been directed to an elevator and room 304 when he said he was there to see Melinda May. He also had a feeling he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave. People did not stumble in here.

Andrew tried to ignore that the elevator was silent, the hallway spotless and that a camera turned to follow him. He knew Phillip’s voice well enough to recognize it on the phone. Maybe he had his doubts about who he was, about the work May did with him. There was still no reason to catastrophize this right now.

With the door shut behind him this was a normal enough hospital room. Plastic bedframe and a little TV on a bracket in the corner playing a silent and staticky image of the weather. The glass in the window was wrong, nearly opaque.

They both looked asleep. Phillip’s jacket folded between his head and the wall, Melinda asleep on his shoulder.

He’d known she was hurt rushing over here, had to be hurt too bad to play it off. It was different to see it. Melinda was sickeningly pale except for her red cheeks and one blackened eye, her lips cracked and colorless, more than one bag on the IV stand.

It kept him standing frozen inside the door for too long. He should say something probably, but instead noticed a folder that must be her information hanging on the inside of the door and reached for it on instinct.

“You don’t have permission to read her chart so please don’t try,” a voice said mildly. 

“Phillip what the hell is this?”

The man scrubbed a hand over his face, flashed a little grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Nobody calls me Phillip anymore.”

“Tough.”

Someone had muted the heartrate monitor so there wasn’t even any beeping in the awkward silence. Andrew reached out towards her leg under the blanket but froze when he realized he still didn’t know where she was hurt.

But Phillip nodded at him to go ahead. “Puncture wound to the lower left of her ribcage. Infection set in. It’s being treated. Should clear up soon but she’s still running a fever. The amount of medication she’s on hits her hard.”

Her ankle was too warm under his hand and he swallowed hard, because Andrew could tell enough of what Phil was leaving out of that description. Someone stabbed her. Someone stabbed his girl and no one took care of it, because either there wasn’t time or there wasn’t supplies and that shit just didn’t _happen_ to security for planes for charter.

He’d keep trying because the only other option seemed to be to lose her, but how the hell was he supposed to play along with this forever?

“Hey May, look who’s here May.”

“Don’t wake her,” Andrew hissed under his breath. She obviously needed the sleep.

“I’d rather not wake her when I move,” he muttered and then almost snapped, “May. Look.”

Melinda’s eyes cracked open hazily, blinked a few times before she noticed him standing there.

Andrew couldn’t help smiling when her face brightened seeing him.

“Yeah, look who’s here,” Phillip murmured. “Can you let go of me?”

Andrew finally noticed that Melinda’s hand, even with the IV in it, was closed tightly around Phillip’s shirt.

“You’re going to want to get your jacket and shoes off before we swap. If you’ve got two shirts on, I’d lose one of them too. She’s a radiator right now.”

It was surreal folding his jacket and shirt over the chair, shoving his shoes underneath like he’d just gotten home for the day. It was cold in here in just a t-shirt. He could feel Phillip watching him and filed that away for later, just like the fact that Melinda had woke up cause he ordered her to.

There was a lot of this Andrew would have to think about later.

“See if she’ll grab your hand. Other hand. You’re going to hold her shoulders still so I can get out.”

It was a relief when her fingers closed tight around his, though that didn't make it any less of an awkward shuffle trying to keep her still while Phillip pulled his arm away and slid down the side of the bed to get his feet on the floor. 

She didn't move, but her breathing sped up and got shallow and Phillip snapped, "Get your damn hand under her ribcage. Sorry May. Sorry."

Andrew sitting down and tucking her against his side went smoother. It was obvious now that Phillip had done all this before, knew how to maneuver someone who was hurt, was even familiar enough to look under the blanket to check nothing had messed up a tube or wire before Andrew could even say anything.

“See if you can get her to drink something before she falls asleep again,” he said and almost bolted for what seemed to be a little washroom.

Andrew snorted when he realized why, a heavy knee sluggishly settling itself across his hips and digging in against his gut.

Melinda was still staring at him with fuzzy concentration, eyes half focused and fixed on his face, her hand now clutching around his shirt.

He reached out to stroke her cheek with his thumb. “Hey Melinda.”

She didn't smile or blink or make a sound. Andrew tried not to frown at her, tucked her bangs back off her face. There was a pile of folders on the table just out of reach, two cups within it. One had a straw.

“Are you thirsty babe?" She didn't react, but when he held the straw up to her mouth she drank a little.

It was finally hitting him, where he was and why. Andrew leaned down to nuzzle her hair, kiss her temple. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He was, he just wasn't sure what for. It felt like maybe he should have called the number he had when she was late, even though he had no idea where it went. It felt like he should have just _known_ , even though that wasn't rational.

Melinda sighed, rubbed her jaw against his shirt before she closed her eyes.

“Did she drink anything?” Phillip was back in the room with wet hair and a buttoned-up shirt, crumpled where Melinda’s fist had obviously been for hours.

“A couple swallows. She… she hasn’t made a sound.” Melinda was quiet, but this wasn’t normal. He was trying not to let it scare him.

“Sorry, that’s just the meds. She probably won’t say anything until they can finally back everything off a bit later tonight.”

Finally. He’d said _finally_. Andrew had a horrible thought. “How long has she been here?”

Phillip looked apologetic all of a sudden, so Andrew knew he’d guessed right. She’d been hurt wherever the hell she’d really been and had been receiving treatment back in the damn city after it got bad and _still_ no one had contacted him.

“It’s been about 30 hours. You would have been contacted if she was dead or was dying. There have been some arrangements made,” he finished, like that was reassuring at all.

“Jesus _Christ_.” More of the anger and frustration must have been audible in that than he’d thought, because Phillip glared back at him.

“This is the best we can do for now,” he snapped.

Andrew didn’t feel like he knew Phillip, but he knew a bit by this point. First, he’d been the occasional reference as ‘my friend’, then a public meeting meant to be casual but he’d gotten the sense it was pre-planned. Andrew had been told Phillip did logistics, got told they kinda went to school together and mostly believed it, but Phil Coulson watched the behavior of those around him in a way people only did who were trained to and sometimes seemed like he picked out his facial expressions off a list before he made them. He'd always known it wasn't anymore the whole truth than Melinda's descriptions of her work trips.

But he’d listened to the guy tease her when he dropped off papers for Melinda to lock up, seen the faces Melinda made on the phone with him before she said things like, “Well I don’t spend half my life on usenet discussing trading cards like some people.”

It had kept him from saying anything to either of them all the times she’d left for work with him and came back hurt, the few times he’d seen Coulson bring her back injured with the same blank expression like he’d be just as indifferent to it if she died.

Right now the guy was silently tying his tie, blinking at the fuzzy weather forecast without seeing it.

“You weren’t allowed to let me in here at all, were you,” Andrew said, already knowing he was right. Whoever they worked for, government or corporate or maybe weirder, whatever this was he was never supposed to have seen any of it.

Phillip actually snorted. “Nope, but it’s done. _I’ll_ be getting a phone call later. They won’t bother you. Please go out the same door by 11 though and don’t try to come back.”

“Why do this?” It seemed like a fair question, but Phillip looked genuinely puzzled by it.

“She won’t stay asleep for long by herself like this and I have to leave. Hopefully she can go home by tomorrow night.”

He had obviously been here a while. “Were you there when she…”

“Do _not_ ask me specifics,” Phillip said in what Andrew could tell was a probably a very dangerous voice, but after a second he shook his head no.

They could hear inside this room then. Great.

The man gave his jacket a rough shake and starting pulling it on. “If I can drop her off home I know she’ll sleep. No one likes sleeping in hospitals. You can cook, so she’s going to eat more than the same three things over and over. And you’re probably smart enough to recognize when somethings actually going wrong medically even if she’s too out of it to tell or unconscious.”

That was…very telling. More than he would have expected. He wondered if Phillip even realized that he didn’t completely trust the people they worked for to take care of her. And apparently Andrew _was_ trusted. Melinda must talk about him more than he ever would have thought.

It made him feel generous enough to say, "You might want to try fixing your hair," because it wasn't going to matter how much the guy tried to straighten out his suit with his hair drying at all angles.

Phillip blinked twice then said, "Shit," and vanished back into the washroom. 

It was obvious he was really supposed to be somewhere already, but Phillip came back over, pressed the backs of his fingers against Melinda’s hot forehead with a frown, then bent and kissed her dirty hair with an over-the-top _mwah_ sound like kids did before he went to leave. It was probably the most reassuring thing he’d ever done, ever could have done to show him that Phillip and Melinda at least were exactly what she said they were, what she thought they were.

“Who the hell are you people?” he grumbled under his breath.

He wasn’t expecting any answer, but Phillip looked back with a crooked little smile and said, “Classified. But I’m working on it Dr. Garner. Trust me.”

The door didn’t even click when it closed.

Andrew let out a heavy breath, rubbed his hand over Melinda's arm on his chest. This was a lot. That was a lot of information in a couple hours, all of it important, but one part in particular was the biggest relief right now. There seemed to be an end date on the lie he and Melinda probably couldn't handle living.

He watched her face for a while, it'd been a long week, then kissed her forehead again before he tried to settle in for the next several hours. If there was only one forever on the table then they didn't have a problem. They just had to be patient. There still wasn't a single part of this that wasn't worth the wait. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't quite remember what set this particular fic off, but it almost wrote itself. Perhaps it was cause I finally sat down and did the timeline work so I could write Andrew better. I really need to do a post about all that at some point. Title is from Insight by Depeche Mode cause I cannot help myself. Thanks for reading -M


End file.
